In a small Lutheran church located in the Black Forest Region of post-war Germany, I received the Sacrament of Baptism as an infant in 1948. My parents, displaced due to the Second World War, applied for emigration and, in the winter of 1951-52, with my younger brother and me, arrived in the United States and were settled into a displaced person camp in Massachusetts. Months later we were taken into the rectory of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Charlestown, MA. An old bachelor priest, the Rev. Wolcott Cutler, had filled his large, five-story home with refugees. Though most stayed briefly, we lived in that rectory for the next 10 years. We became caretakers of the building, and my father the sexton at the church.

Mr. Cutler (as he was called — a deeply committed low churchman, he would have been offended to be called Father Cutler) was an extraordinary saintly pastor, who, though from a rich Boston Brahmin family, had devoted his entire ordained ministry to inner city work among the poor. He was seen as the pastor of all of Charlestown, though 90% of the community was Irish Catholic. He was a zealous activist for peace and justice. Mr. Cutler had a profound influence on me as a child; my mother used to tell me that even as a small boy I said that I wanted to be like Mr. Cutler when I grew up. The call to ordained ministry was present as far back as I can consciously remember. Childhood games often included playing church, myself as the priest distributing communion.

Eventually, Mr. Cutler retired and a new priest with a wife and children arrived and we were required to leave the rectory. My parents, through intense and diligent work, were able to fulfill the American dream and purchase their own home nearby. The new priest, Fr. Kelly, was a high churchman; and in Sunday School he instructed us that we were not Protestants but Catholics — not Roman Catholics, but Anglo-catholics. This was the best news I had ever heard. After being verbally and physically bullied in our largely-Catholic neighborhood for being “Protestants and Nazis,” it turned out I was Catholic, too! St. John’s Episcopal Church was the center of my life. Besides being a refuge where we as immigrants were accepted and loved, it also was the formative spiritual community of my childhood and adolescence. We had a boys’ choir and a church Boy Scout Troop. In high school we had a very active Young People’s Fellowship, because of which I had my first preaching opportunity on Youth Sunday. Seminarians from the Episcopal Theological School provided youth leadership, and one in particular, Fr. James Hagen, solidified my vocation. As a senior in high school I met with my bishop, the Rt. Rev. Anson Stokes. “Jurgen you’ll make a wonderful priest; now when you go to college, don’t major in religion. You’ll get plenty of that in Seminary.” He shook my hand and I was a postulant!

College and Seminary

In 1965, I went off to college. I had been recruited by Harvard College but accepted a full scholarship to Amherst when my mother informed me Harvard meant living at home! My secondary education had been at the Boston Latin School. Six years of Latin and three years of Greek in high school and an interest in archaeology and psychology directed me to choose Classics as my major. The greatest providence of college was meeting Gloria Gehshan, a lady from Smith College, on the very first day of freshman year. She would become my wife. We have been together most of our 64 years of life.

This was the turbulent 60s and the days of student revolution. I joined the Students for a Democratic Society, the premier New Left organization and was very engaged in organizing teach-ins, demonstrations, and marches against the Vietnam War. This activism for peace and justice was for me an expression of my faith and Christians like Merton, the Berrigans, Dorothy Day, and Martin Luther King Jr. were my heroes. The underside of this era was also part of my life: sexual promiscuity, drugs, growing cynicism. By the time I arrived at seminary in 1969, the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, I was burned out and I found myself in a deep depression.

Spirituality had not been a very significant part of my Christian life, but my depression created a quest for inner resources. Dabbling in Eastern religions and New Age philosophies, Jungian psychology became my new “religion.” In my last year of seminary I interned at an Episcopal church, under a priest who himself was an avid disciple of Jung and who had an interest in Spiritual Healing. Having been well indoctrinated with a biblical hermeneutic of Bultmanian demythologization, in which all the healing miracles of Jesus had been discarded, I was not sure what these folk at the parish thought they were doing, but I dutifully participated. Though a senior in seminary, I had never participated in a Bible study or prayer group before — much less a healing service — but these Wednesday morning gatherings became utterly transformational. For the first time I began to “experience” the reality of God and the power of prayer.

My Conversion as a Young Priest

As I began my curacy as a deacon in 1972, I continued my explorations in the Holy Spirit. The charismatic movement was emerging in the Episcopal Church. 9 o’clock in the Morning by Bennett, Gathered for Power by Pulkingham, and Miracle in Darien by Fullam were narrations of priests and parishes totally transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit. “Spiritual Renewal” was the new buzzword in the church; Cursillo, Faith Alive, Marriage Encounter, the Charismatic Movement — all were efforts to bring new life to the church in the face of what was beginning to become evident: decline and decrease in the Episcopal Church. I was drawn to these movements, not just for the church’s sake, but for the sake of my own very thirsty soul.

In this quest, the Lord provided a spiritual mentor, an older woman named Elizabeth Price. She asked me: “Would you like to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit?” This was an essential and pervasive theme of the charismatic renewal: that the apostolic experience of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost was available today and was the rightful promised inheritance of every believer. My response was rather passive: “Well, why not?” She prayed over me on a number of occasions but nothing happened. Then in June 1974, in the living room of the home of some Baptist evangelists who were friends of Elizabeth, while being prayed over with the laying on of hands, the heavens opened and the Spirit of God gave me a supernatural vision of the Blood of Christ.

From that point everything began to change: my spirituality — my prayer became alive, real, and personal; my theology — I began a decided move away from liberalism toward biblical orthodoxy; my preaching — I began to preach Christ crucified; my ministry — the power and experience of the Holy Spirit was central.

My charismatic conversion, however, also produced problems. “Evangelism is a dirty word in the Episcopal church!” my rector asserted at my proposal to start an evangelism committee. I felt a sense that it was time for a new call. After a few disappointing rector searches, I was called to be the rector of St. Paul’s, in Malden, Massachusetts. It was a small dying elderly urban congregation; my youth was the major qualification of their call.

My work as an Anglican Priest

St. Paul’s was a wonderful adventure for the next 14 years of my life. The parish had a remarkable transformation. There were all the outward indicators of growth: membership, attendance, staff, income, program; but more importantly, we became the dwelling place of the living God and a mission center of living water (Ezekiel 47): conversions, healings, deliverances, deep worship, ministry to the poor. We became known as the “Charismatic” Episcopal Church. We introduced literally thousands of folk around New England to a deeper experience of the Holy Spirit through weekly healing services, preaching and teaching missions at other churches, and regular “Renewal” conferences hosted at St. Paul’s.

During this time, God was planting the seeds of my conversion to Catholicism. I began the discipline of being a penitent. My first confessor was a monk of the Episcopal community of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Fr. Carleton Jones. Our monthly meetings introduced me to Anglo-catholic worship and spirituality. My many years of spiritual direction with Carleton ended abruptly with his sudden announcement that he was becoming a Roman Catholic. I remember vividly the words of the letter he sent to me explaining his decision: “I have come to the conclusion that the Unity of the church is not finally something to be strived for but rather a gift already from the Lord to his church in the Petrine office.”

Radical feminism is a powerful lobby in the Diocese of Massachusetts. At one diocesan meeting, a priest and seminary professor declared abortion to be a sacrament. Thus, I felt called to be a voice for the sanctity of life and organized a chapter of National Organization of Episcopalians for Life (NOEL). My reputation as a charismatic left me somewhat on the fringes of the clergy as an eccentric; but my pro-life activism drew bitter anger and rejection from many of my colleagues. The abortion crisis, however, posed for me even a larger question: How could the moral compass of the church be so profoundly broken?

Towards the end of the 80s, I sensed that my time at St. Paul’s was ending. After being rejected by the few possible prospects in the greater Boston area, I began earnestly to seek the Lord. On the Eve of the Epiphany, 1990, while reading a book The New Catholics, a collection of testimonies of converts to Catholicism, I received a clear word from God that I was to be a Catholic. In obedience to that word, I actually began exploring the Pastoral Provision. I met a number of times with a Franciscan priest to explore the Catholic Faith. I also met with Fr. Andrew Mead, the rector of the Anglo-catholic Church of the Advent. Strangely the Holy Spirit seemed to say, “Not yet!” But the conversations with Fr. Mead produced an invitation to serve with him at the Advent.

Immersion in the deep, rich world of Anglo-Catholic worship and spirituality, far from being alien to my charismatic tendencies, was a profoundly charismatic experience. I was introduced to Keble, Pusey, and Newman, to Benson and Grafton, to the Triduum, the Veneration of the Cross, Benediction, the Angelus, and daily Mass. I remained at the Advent seven years, but again I sensed God was calling me elsewhere. Was it time to go to Rome? Again, God seemed to say, “Not yet!”

In Holy Week of 1997, I received an invitation to become rector of Christ Church Hamilton. Christ Church had been the premier Evangelical Episcopal church of the diocese. It had experienced a wonderful renewal in the late 70s and 80s and began to draw in many faculty and students from Gordon College and Gordon-Conwell seminary. But the last decade had been a disastrous time of conflict and diminishment and, at the request of the Vestry, the bishop removed the rector. The parish had become a small, financially stressed, demoralized, depressed group living in the memories of past glory.

Newly equipped with all my Anglo-catholic experience and paraphernalia (Eucharistic vestments, bells, incense), I went to Christ Church. Almost instantly, God renewed the church, liturgically, spiritually, and politically. Attendance doubled the first year and tripled the next, as did the budget. The staff and ministry of the parish were rebuilt; missionary work was revitalized. Seminarians came in droves and many were ordained (some have even journeyed on to Roman and Orthodox orders). A vision that had animated my ministry, a vision of a church — fully evangelical, fully charismatic — came to fruition at Christ Church.

But alas, even as we thrived, the din of the political turmoil of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion loomed. I constantly posed the question to the lay and clerical leadership of the church: What is God calling Christ Church to be and do in the midst of this crisis? One answer to that question came in the developments of what would become the Anglican Church of North America. A significant group of parishioners thought this was the direction we should go. Another large group, equally faithful and orthodox, were convinced that steadfast witness within the Episcopal Church was God’s plan. Each sought my opinion. My theological preferences were with the former; my catholic sensibilities (against schism) were with the latter. I proposed that we accept both directions as authentically led by the Holy Spirit and plan a future of two sister parishes, one a new church plant of the ACNA and the other a continuing Episcopal church at Christ Church. The two sister parishes would continue in mutual affection, prayer, and where possible shared ministry — a witness of reconciliation and charity over against the bloodbath of lawsuits and depositions going on in the denomination.

The Vestry adopted this vision for the future. We set a timetable for the next 12 months and invited each member of the parish to discern prayerfully God’s specific will for them. We developed the appropriate planning and organizational structures for building of the two new future congregations. I made it clear that I did not believe God was calling me to one congregation or the other. My call was to see through the birth of these two new churches.

This very crisis in the Episcopal Church had been raising questions of ecclesiology, authority, discerning truth, the doctrine of marriage, etc. I became more convinced that as rich and wonderful the Anglican heritage was, it did not contain the spiritual DNA to resolve this crisis. As good a home as the Episcopal church had been for me since childhood and as joyful and satisfying a ministry as I had had within her, my intention was to retire from active ministry in the Episcopal Church and then explore admission into the Catholic Church. But again God said, “Not yet!”

I rejoice that through God’s grace I have had a very honest, respectful, and mutually affectionate relationship with my Episcopal bishop, the Rt. Rev. Tom Shaw. Although he approved the parish partition plan, at a private meeting, it was made clear to me that I would not be allowed to remain an Episcopal priest and be involved in the Anglican Church of North America — “You have to choose!”

I finished my work at Christ Church over the next six months. In 2009, I preached and celebrated my last liturgies as rector of Christ Church. The final Eucharist included the Vestries of both congregations mutually affirming and blessing one another. On the following Sunday, October 4, the Feast of St. Francis, I preached and celebrated my first liturgy as rector of Christ the Redeemer Anglican (CTR). I was inspired by the Lord’s words to Francis from the San Damiano crucifix: “Go and repair my church which as you see is in ruins!”

The last three years as rector of CTR were the most joyous and fulfilling of my 40 years in ordained ministry. Roughly 250 folk joined me in the exodus from the Episcopal Church; another 150 new folk have since joined. God’s provision has been bountiful. But from the beginning I also knew that this was to be for me a brief assignment; I felt called to be the Founding rector and then invite CRT to search for their first new rector. In early January of 2012, the parish had successfully called their new rector. Concurrently, the US Anglican Ordinariate was established. At last I heard the Lord say, “Now is the time!”

This last year I gathered together CTR parishioners to explore, under the brilliant tutelage of Dr. Thomas Howard, the meaning of the invitation of Pope Benedict in Anglicanorum Coetibus. For ten weeks we asked: “What does the Catholic Church really teach?” A convert from Fundamentalism and Anglicanism, Dr. Howard was able to instruct us both biblically and cogently about those subjects most troublesome to Evangelical Protestants: Marian dogma and devotion, the primacy of Peter, the infallibility of the Pope, the veneration and intercession of saints, the doctrine of purgatory, prayer for the dead, etc. A second ten-week study program was focused on Anglican-Catholic Ecumenical Conversations and initiatives. I led twelve individuals forward to personally respond to the Pope’s invitation to Anglicans and to come into full communion with the See of Rome through the Ordinariate.

Though I might have journeyed earlier to Rome in my own personal history, this was a collective historic moment for the beginning of the fulfillment of the vision of the reunion of Rome and Canterbury. That was the dream of our tractarian fathers, that was the explicit goal of Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Ramsey at the launching of the ARCIC dialogues, this was an implicit hope in the bold ecumenical theology of Pope John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint and his re-envisioning of a papacy for the whole church. I am humbled to be invited by God to be a small part of this historic work. At noon on August 15, 2012, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, after 40 years, I officially resigned my Anglican Priestly Orders; at 6 p.m. of that day I was confirmed and received into the Catholic Church. In February 2013, I received word that I had been approved for ordination in the Catholic Church. In fact, I was Pope Benedict’s last rescript.

Why Catholicism?

Since announcing my decision to become a Catholic and to seek ordination through the Anglican Ordinariate, I have had many an inquiry from folk wondering, “Why?”

My first reason is that this decision is an act of obedience to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Though a long personal journey of twenty-five years or more, I would add that as personal as it is, it is not just a private or uniquely individual call, not simply a private denominational predilection.

Over the years I have read innumerable books, have had many searching conversations, watched hours of EWTN, listened to many testimonies and teachings — all of which have contributed to the decision to become a Catholic. But above all it has been a deep, constant magnetic pull of the Holy Spirit to come to the center of the Church. It is this deep intuitive sense each time I enter a Catholic church or religious community that I am in the Church, not a church. We speak in evangelical circles when a person of the Jewish faith becomes a Christian that they have become a “completed Jew.” To become a Catholic is for me to become a “completed Christian.” As I have already previously articulated, the driving vision of my ministry has been to build a church that was “fully catholic, fully evangelical, and fully charismatic.” I have come to the conviction that one cannot be “fully catholic” apart from communion with the See of Peter. For that matter one cannot be “fully evangelical” or “fully charismatic” apart from the rich and deep historical meaning of those words in the fullness of the Catholic Church. As has been said to me on a number of occasions by wise and mature Catholic friends, you need leave nothing behind of any Christian tradition that is of true gospel value. All of it comes only to fullness. To become a Catholic is to receive from my Lord His last providential gift from the cross: “Behold thy Mother.”

There is in the Christian life a force of gravity, which draws the believer ever deeper into union with Christ. That union is not only a private mystical union — though it is that — but a deepening union with the mystical body of Christ, the Church. It is a dogmatic principle of the Catholic Church that “this Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church” (Lumen Gentium). If this is true, then this gravitational pull of Christ’s Spirit is universally active, drawing all humanity to Christ the Head and to the fullness of His saving grace, which He mediates through His Body the Church. John Henry Newman, an Anglican convert to Rome, insightfully quipped that there was no steady state between atheism and Catholicism! In the human soul there is always that spiritual battle between the centrifugal forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil drawing us away from the love of God, and the centripetal dynamic of the Holy Spirit pulling us ever deeper into the love of God. There is agravitas to the Catholic Church, to the See of Peter, that is I believe a true and objective charism intended by Christ to draw His followers into union with Him in the fellowship of the Catholic Church.

That of course already displays the second reason for my decision: theological. The great divide between the churches of the Reformation and the Catholic Church is in the domain of ecclesiology: What is the church? In the Protestant world, Anglicanism has sought to maintain a catholic ecclesiology: organic, universal, and apostolic. Bishops, creeds, sacraments, and conciliarism have been maintained as integral pieces of Anglican ecclesiology, papal primacy alone being set aside. Within that catholic structure, Anglicanism has also asserted a principle of theological freedom and diversity. One may believe in spiritual regeneration in baptism but one may not. One may believe in the real presence in the eucharist but one may not. One may believe in the authority of Scripture, but one may not. One may believe in the sanctity of marriage but one may not. For much of my life as an Anglican, that freedom was a pleasant gift, but increasingly it had become a source of distress and a profound impediment to my priestly work as a pastor and preacher. How could I proclaim from the pulpit what the Bible teaches or Christianity asserts, when my bishop says quite the opposite? How could I advise a person in the confessional when the priest in the neighboring parish would advise the opposite? My authority as a teacher and confessor needed to be based on something other than my own best opinion.

Flannery O’Connor spoke of the glorious freedom she experienced in being delivered from the “tyranny of her intellect.” Credo ut intelligam! That has become my experience. It is the paradox of true intellectual freedom by submission to “the Church’s teaching.” It is a glorious freedom, not only in the mind’s love for God, but in the vocation of priest in the theological and spiritual formation of disciples of Jesus. Thus, this theological conversion is not first of all a conversion to the peculiar Catholic beliefs that my inquirers challenge me about: “What about Mary?” “What about purgatory?” “What about contraception?” Rather it is a conversion to the faithfulness of Christ’s gift to the Church of an authentic authority to bind and to loose. At its deepest it is a question of pneumatology even more than ecclesiology. How does the Spirit of Truth actually function in the Church? Whatever complexities and seeming incongruities may be discerned, the Magisterium is at minimum a reasonable and practicable answer to the question of truth that is trustworthy. At best it is what the Church proclaims, the provision by Christ to His people of the gift of unerring guidance.

Finally and perhaps most urgently, my decision to become a Catholic is driven by our Lord’s high priestly prayer, “May they be one, that the world might believe.” The unity of the Church has been for me a primary and constant imperative of following Jesus. The unity of the Church is not only an imperative for the internal life of God’s people but an essential dimension of her evangelical mission. There is no greater scandal and impediment to the conversion of the world to the love of Christ than her divisions. Pope Benedict established the Anglican Ordinariate both as a concrete instrument to begin to organically heal the divisions of the Reformation and as an essential strategy for the sake of “the new Evangelization.” As an Anglican, I have received this as a gracious invitation to reconciliation. I can find no valid faithful reason to decline.

After 40 years as an Episcopal priest, Jürgen Liias became a Catholic in August 2012. In April 2013 he was ordained a Catholic priest through the Anglican Ordinariate. A community of about 25 other former Anglicans have joined him in forming the parish of St. Gregory the Great of the US Anglican Ordinariate in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts.

This is a wonderful article of a journey of faith. We become belivers via many routes but the bridge of Christ that brings us to Him is His shed body and blood on the cross. Today there are many voices calling go this way, no go this way. We get tossed to and fro. Then the final voice calls. Come Unto me and I will give you rest. For me also it took 38 yrs even though born -again bouncing from congregation to congregation. Searching, hungering, for more of the truth.. I had found the Way through Jesus to eternal life, but to find the Church that had the whole truth was much harder, as most had alot of truth, enough to get you in the door for a while. Using Gods word as sheeps clothing, Now God’s word never goes out void and will always do its marvelous work in your soul.keeping yu searching till He brings you home to His established church on Earth. The same as we believe that the bible was written by the Holy spirit by Holy men of God. We know that the Holy Roman Catholic Church was born the same way. I also had a supernatural vision of Christ quite unexpectantly during the Eurcharist. The Priest was gone out of my natural vision and it was Christ himself standing in front of me giving me His Body and Blood in the instant it took to place the Host on my tongue, He spoke these words to me, which took many years to get the total understanding.” Even though you have denied one of my Children communion with me, I will not deny you. He had the greatest look of love yet the greatest look of sadness on His face. He was gone ..and my natural vision came back and the Priest was there. I searched and searched for an image of Him that looked like him and I finally found it. It was the Divine mercy Photo. Today I am a Extraorindary Eucharistic Minister of communion. I serve humbily at the foot of His cross giving Him my hands and heart to administer to the souls and needs whatever they be as His people come unto Him for the Bread of Life.
As in Seeking him for Eternal Life , we must also seek His true Church not just something that tingles our ears. When we find it we know without a doubt we have come Home and can rest in the teachings that the gates of hell nor the world can close or shut down. The Church that prevails. Is there sin inside those doors? Yes we are there. In His loving, forgiving, merciful, healing arms.
COME LET US ADORE HIM

What a beautiful, beautiful account of your journey. It has touched me deeply, and I wish I could meet you personally to hug your neck and to prayerfully ask for your blessings.
Welcome, Father.
Chris Caudle
Beaufort, SC

http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/ Manny

Wonderful story and extremely well written. Thank you and welcome to our wonderful faith.

The people of God rest like sleeping babes in the arms of Holy Mother Church. We don’t want you to fall asleep, Father Liias, because you have such an obvious gift for active ministry, but I do hope that from time to time you experience the joy of being rocked quietly in the arms of the Church, and in the arms of our Blessed Mother. Welcome home.

I have known Fr Liias for many years, and his hiking expeditions in the White Mountains with members of his congregations were all high points of his pastoral care.

Chanankat

Welcome “home” Father. I too made a long pilgrimage from infant baptism as an Anglican at St Cyprian’s Anglican Church, Calgary to confirmation as a Catholic at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary, under the tutelage of Fr Eugene Cooney, such a great priest and preacher that he was made by John Paul II the Roman Catholic Bishop of Nelson Diocese of British Columbia. I wish in many ways I had followed him directly to Nelson. Instead I began a pilgrimage towards ‘Orthodox Catholic’ worship both as a friend of OCA Orthodox and as a communicant with the Ukrainian Greco-Catholics in the Eparchy of Edmonton, not officially joining however, and tomorrow I will fill in the dotted lines to join the Ordinariate as well, yet hopefully maintaining my profound sense of fellowship with the Byzantine Catholic Church, indeed all of the Eastern Catholics. There is a parallel there with the Ordinariate! But back to you and this eloquent testimony Fr Father Jürgen. I have never read a better testimony – and want to experience your Solemn Mass some day! Welcome Home!

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